Business Pulse

At first, everyone says all the right things. Statements are issued, condolences offered and promises made to let everyone take as much time as needed.

So it has gone so far with the tragedy involving NASCAR driver Tony Stewart, whose sprint car hit and killed an angry rival, Kevin Ward Jr., Saturday in a dirt-track race in upstate New York. Stewart, 43, and Ward, 20, bumped cars and, after Ward spun out, he walked on to the track to confront Stewart during a caution lap. No criminal charges have been filed and none are expected.

“At first, your sponsors are all nice,” Wheeler told me Monday. “The problem comes when you get down the road. Companies only want pristine things to happen.”

Those kinds of conversations “are the things you don’t say when you’re (involved),” Wheeler said, noting that companies tend to imply and hint about severing ties as fallout continues from a fatal or damaging accident.

Forbesestimated the race team generated $91 million in revenue last season and turned a profit of $6 million. Stewart-Haas counts on three-time season champion Stewart as one of its major marketing and business assets, helping support a NASCAR operation that involves 250 employees working in a 140,000-square-foot Kannapolis headquarters.

Questions multiply by the day, even as those involved and those on the outside call for patience. Will there be lawsuits? How will the public react? What will sponsors expect? Before anything happens, Stewart and the family of Ward need time to absorb what has happened, racing and marketing experts said. Already, matters have gotten complicated.

Stewart and his team soon reversed course, with the team issuing a statement saying he wouldn’t race. He has already decided to forgo a dirt-track sprint car race this weekend, though no decision has been made on the NASCAR race in Michigan. Stewart is best known as a NASCAR champion, but the death of Ward occurred in a lower-tier dirt-track race.

Among other business ventures, Stewart owns a dirt track in Ohio.

In a written statement Tuesday morning, Brett Frood, executive vice president of Stewart-Haas Racing, said, “Both Tony Stewart and Stewart-Haas Racing have forged strong partnerships over the years. These relationships transcend professional and business objectives and possess pillars of friendship, loyalty and genuine caring for one another. Tony is an individual with strong moral fiber and authenticity, and his partnerships are fostered from these principles. With that being said, we have been in close contact with all of our corporate partners. While they are all thinking about the family and friends of Kevin Ward Jr., they also care about the emotional well-being of Tony, and they are very supportive of him during this difficult time. It was a tragic accident that happened and it is an emotional time for all involved. Our partners realize this and we continue to be in close communication with all of them.”

Former NASCAR team owner and crew chief Ray Evernham told me, "People are going to examine it and watch the video and try to tell, well, was he on the gas, where’s the wheel, whatever — the only thing I can tell you is even at 35 and 40 miles an hour, those things are harder to drive than they are going fast (because of the way the wings on the car work). I can tell you that inside those cars, they’re not the easiest things to see out of.”

Evernham, who drove sprint cars earlier in his career, prefaced all of his remarks by emphasizing he views Ward’s death and Stewart’s role in it as “a tragic series of events.” Before anything else happens, he added, the family must have time to bury their relative and begin to process what happened.

Max Muhleman, a former consultant to team owner Rick Hendrick, the most successful owner in NASCAR, agreed with Wheeler that, while death is more common in racing than in other sports, the circumstance of a driver killing another driver in this way is unprecedented.

“There isn’t any history book to refer to on this,” Muhleman told me. Stewart, known as an ornery driver on the track, has struggled in the past with anger management and various flare-ups during his 15-year NASCAR career. Muhleman described Stewart as “a roughrider” in the mold of Stewart’s racing hero, A.J. Foyt.

To repair the damage, sponsors and others will want to hear directly from Stewart about what happened and how he has responded to Ward's death.

Sponsorships pale when compared with someone dying, of course, but race teams depend on corporate backing more in auto racing than in other sports. Typically, sponsors account for 60 percent to 75 percent of a team’s revenue, the money used to pay drivers and crews and build cars and engines.

“It’s just pure communication,” Evernham said of working with sponsors in tandem to determine how and when Stewart returns to competition. “I’ve always looked at people who were part of the race team and were certainly giving us money to advertise on our cars as partners, not sponsors. And you have to treat those people like partners. And when the emotion dies down and people are thinking more clearly, you sit with your partners and say, ‘Here’s where we’re at. This is what we’re thinking. How does that plan fit?’ I don’t know any other way to do it.”

Before too much longer, Evernham said, the first priority is to pair Stewart with a therapist. No one can handle that kind of stress and trauma without psychological help, the former team owner said.

Soon enough, business concerns will creep in to the picture, too.

Sponsors “never say” a tragedy forced them to back away from a partnership, said Wheeler, the former Charlotte speedway executive. “It’s all innuendo. One thing they don’t want to do is sully their reputation.”